Growing up in Southern California in the 60's & 70's

Welcome to Wes Clark's Avocado Memories!

What are "Avocado Memories?" My collection of family photographs, documenting the changes we inflicted on our little stucco-covered Burbank, CA home during the period 1966 -1980. Some people have asked why I took photographs of the interior of our house while I was growing up - to that, I can only answer that I knew, someday, I would want to look back on the place where I grew up. You can, too.

Added to this are little essays about various aspects of growing up in Southern California in the Sixties and Seventies.

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Why This Web Page?

I was eleven when my dad and I were watching a 1967 episode of the Sixties TV sitcom Family Affair entitled "Fat, Fat the Water Rat." The story was that the normally pampered and sheltered Buffy and Jodie were playing with some kids from a poorer New York City neighborhood. One kid called up for his ma to throw down a piece of buttered bread sprinkled with sugar, and chanted "Fat, fat the water rat/Sixteen bullets in his hat!" Dad told me that he, too, used to chant this as a boy, and also ate buttered bread sprinkled with sugar. We had just watched the 1937 film Dead End, and Dad had made similar comparisons with his own Brooklyn childhood in the 1920's. As he told me these things I knew something precious was in danger of being lost, but I didn't know what to do about it.

This website is an attempt to document my childhood so my children will understand. If strangers find it interesting, so much the better!